Rachel Maddow responds to OReilly over Fox's Race Baiting

Last night, something funny happened on the way to Bill OâReillyâs apology to Shirley Sherrod: he took a stab at Rachel Maddow and her comparatively low ratings. Tonight, Maddow responded with other, similarly relevant information to the Sherrod case, such as the fact that WWE and Spongebob Squarepants not only regularly beat Maddowâ they beat Fox News, too.

After once again making her case that, to her, the way the Sherrod case was handled on Fox News was inappropriate and part of a larger model designed to fuel racial animus in America, Maddow permitted herself some time to take on OâReilly directly on a point he made not quite totally related to Shirley Sherrod or Andrew Breitbart or that larger political narrative: that Fox Newsâ ratings were superior to MSNBCâs.

Maddow pointed out that, yes, The OâReilly Factorâs ratings are better than her showâs, and OâReillyâs swipe was, at least, based in truth. âNow here, Mr. OâReilly has a point,â she conceded. âMr. OâReilly, you and Fox get great ratings. It is so awesome how great your ratings are. You have very big ratings, Monsieurâ (the overly reverent addresses to OâReilly were a motif of the segment). She then proceeded to show the Factorââs larger ratings, followed by a series of programs that beat both the Factor and Rachel Maddow, including Deadliest Catch, WWE Wrestling, Spongebob Squarepants, and Hannah Montana Forever (âwhich is totally understandableâ).

Which led her to the inevitable conclusion: that the ratings discussion was âtotally immaterial to the discussion at handâ:

âWhen you got all âkick your networkâs buttâ and âmadamâ on me, you werenât really trying to tout your networkâs ratings. You were trying to take the attention off of me saying that your network, Fox News, continually crusades on flagrantly bogus stories designed to make white Americans fear black Americans, which Fox News most certainly does for a political purpose, even if it upends the lives of individuals like Shirley Sherrod, even as it frays the fabric of the nation, and even as it makes the American dream more of a dream and less of a promiseâ¦ but even if no one watches us at all, except for my mom and my girlfriend and people who forgot to turn off the TV after Keith, you are still wrong on what really matters, and that would be the facts, Your Highness.â